Hey folks, I've been lurking pretty hard for a while now. Battled off and on in 2013-2014-2015 but then took a break from the hobby. Well, I am back, and feeling rather french. My previous boats are an Andrea Doria built by the great Peter Kunisch that I received gutted and built back up, and a North Carolina class that I received as a hulk, needing all new deck, superstructure, sheeting, and internals. My decision to go with the Dunkerque has to do with the work vs fun formula. The Andrea Doria was a lot of fun for me, it was reasonably effective at 4.5 units and the chances of getting focused down by opponents was very minimal. The North Carolina on the other hand is a top allied contender, and in the hands of my still very rookie self was a bit too much boat for me. I spent far more time on the bottom of the pond and trying to fix gremlins than I actually spent driving/battling with it. Take my advice newbies, a 6 unit battleship for a first ship is a very poor life choice. At least it was for me. So I decided to take a slightly more manageable poor life choice in the form of a 59" long 4.5 unit battlecruiser with dual props and one rudder that will most likely measure its turning circle in astronomical units. But I have some hope, with the rule changes since I've last battled (namely the ability to split off a .5 unit for another gun and the rudder ruling) that Dunkerque could prove to be an entertaining boat. Anywho, I decided upon the Dunkerque because I've always loved the "modern" French battleship designs. Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Richelieu, and Jean Bart are very good looking boats in my opinion. Alsace would've been probably the best looking battleship ever built, alas, we were robbed of the chance to unleash three quads of fantastique french firepower. I promise that the decision to build the Dunkerque specifically has nothing to do with the free plans here on the forums courtesy of Tugboat nor does it have anything to do with the available 3d modeled superstructure and turrets from rcengr. I promise. So, with no experience and armed with Mike's wonderful Bearn thread and Tugboat's Edgar Quinet thread, I downloaded the .pdf's from the forums here and had them printed off at staples and got to tracing. After some tracing and gluing and scroll saw time, I had a pile of ribs, some keels, and got started on fitting it together. Then I snapped a few keels...then a rib...but we ultimately made it. The ribs are fitted into the keels and subdeck following Mike's Bearn thread, securing them into their slots with CA. The hull is filled out with Lowes blue insulation foam board and formed to shape using a hot wire cutter and 60 grit sandpaper on a palm sander that is just big enough to bridge two ribs, letting you just drag it along the rib to create the shape of the hull. I fiberglassed using west systems, which by the way is the first time I have ever used fiberglass for anything so feel free to point and laugh if I messed something up. This is about where I am today, we just started 3d printing the superstructure for the boat and I am waiting on a 25" long 5/16 bit to drill the holes for my shafts. Once I have that this afternoon I'll update with that process along with building my stuffing tubes.
Superstructure update. I did make stuffing tubes and drill holes for shafts yesterday. For my stuffing tubes I used 9/32 .014 wall brass tube, 1/8id 1/4od oilite bushings soldered into place. The tubes are 9" long. The shafts themselves are stainless rod. The oilite bushings were ordered from Mc Master Carr here in NJ and the tube and rod was a local hobby shop. With a tubing cutter it was easy enough to get the tubes the right length, cleaned them up with a 1/4" drill and a knife to remove any burring. With a little flux the bushings soldered in no problem. I cut a paper template for the rudder, I'd like to use a relatively scale looking rudder but we will see how that works out. I used the template to guesstimate the throw of the rudder to try and position the props. I printed out the actual rudder late last night so today I will mount it and final mount the stuffing tubes for the drive props and drill/mount the drag prop shafts.
Nice work. On those soldered Oilite bushings, make sure you get more oil on them. Heating these bushings up will burn the oil out of them. ST
I already have the little plastic syringe in the garage loaded with 30wt to oil them up. What do you run in your stuffing tubes for lubricant? I was going to give them a light packing with marine grease and then push the shaft through. Waiting on the two rudder halves that I JB waterwelded together to set. They didn't come out quite perfect from the print, so I mixed up some waterweld and clamped the two halves together around the rudder shaft. Plan is to sand the excess off to fill in the slight warpage that happened. The overall shape is fine. Will update again hopefully tonight with rudder+prop progress and maybe some deck action. Started gluing down the cap rails yesterday but all the clamps are currently occupied on the rudder. Yes, all 6 clamps I own are holding together a 3.75 sq in rudder.
For future reference, you can also roll crimp in the bushings with a tube cutter and a dull wheel. I have had good luck with that method.
I will have to try that for the rudder/drag shafts. Thanks, I figured soldering them would be pretty standard issue but I can understand the problems caused by heating up the oilite bearings. Ya know what they say, ya live, ya learn, ya get shafted! I have the shafts where I want them and put them in the hull with waterweld. Plans are to sand everything down nice and smooth and then coat it with West Systems to try and blend it into the hull. Here's some pics. Waiting for the shafts to set up and then I'll work on the tube for the rudder. I should really take a minute and clean up my workspace...
When I do, I make sure to have a shaft installed in the bushing, as it can sometimes reduce the ID of the bushing a skosh. The method I typically use is to have a shaft (usually I buy shaft material, pick the largest OD one for this purpose) installed in the bushing then do the crimp. if the bushing gets too tight, just sand some lines on the sacrificial shaft and spin it to wear away just enough material for it to fit the shaft properly.
Nice! I have a Dunkerque hull in progress as well. I have put it on hold because my son really wants to battle a Dido-class cruiser. Once that is done, I will probably move to the Dunk. I have a question, though. Did the blue foam from Lowe's stand up well to the West Systems? I have tried the pink stuff from Home Depot, but that dissolves if you look at it funny. Seriously. It dissolves from CA, epoxy, spray paint, harsh words, etc. Is the blue stuff more resistant to chemicals?
They are the exact same chemical composition the Lowe's blue and a Home Depot pink. They will dissolve when exposed to traditional polyester resin with a styrene hardener. West systems is an epoxy no styrene so it worked just fine. Also my ca seems to work just fine with the blue foam as well I use Bob Smith Industries you can normally find it at your local hobby shop or miniature gaming store rebranded for the store. I don't necessarily think it's because my foam is special more than it's probably the type of adhesives I'm using.
I see my Omaha, you going to battle it? I had it in the water once, floated right on the waterline, but make a turn with it, and it did about a 70 deg roll.
I didn't battle it but did have it on the water numerous times, she was definitely a tippy beast. It's now in Tugboats hands, he had started an Omaha build that I saw pictures of on Facebook and I knew I was never going to get to it so I passed it on to him just as you had passed it on to me. I still have the VU you sent us! My buddy expressed some interest in boat building as I was working on Dunkerque and is now at the "dry fitting ribs and keels" step of building a WW2 refit Gangut. I have made more progress on Dunkerque and will update later with more photos.
More shafts, and bonus Gangut pics. The waterweld worked great for filling the prop shaft areas, I probably could've done a better job sanding it smooth with the hull...I may try to take care of that tomorrow. I'll admit, I'm my worst enemy sometimes! I took some time and designed a simple stuffing tube strut in tinkercad and printed it out, worked great for all 4 shafts. Here is a small pic dump of my progress the last few days. Some of you have seen my posts on facebook, but I'd like to keep this updated as well. Bonus pic of my rookie buddy's Gangut:
Thanks @Beaver , your builds were a great inspiration to get me working on a wooden hull. My wife is building a Suffren using your build thread as a guide, she's the one who tried to build the Queen Elizabeth using Goff plans...she did great but the boat just didn't line up...had two other boat battlers check it out and then we came to the conclusion that the plans were all wonky. I may have to chit chat with you about some of your 3d printed boat adventures (and misadventures), I am trying to 3d print as many parts as possible as a way to continue justifying the $290 printer to the wife . Tomorrow's plan is to give everything below the waterline a good final sanding and what feels like the 442nd coat of epoxy, then on to the fun part...internals! I have a whole brushed boat lying around with Viper ESC's but part of me really wants to go brushless...I coincidentally happen to have a full brushless boat lying around as well, but that never really performed properly. Not quite sure which drivetrain I want to drop in the Dunkerque...or if the brushless setup I have (two 850kv Turnigy outrunners, two 45a car ESC's) will even work well in the Dunk.
Good luck with the Suffren, she's a great ship. Someday I NEED to build myself another one. lol Tell your wife that if she wants to give the EQ another try in the future, she'd probably be better off using the original French plans. (available HERE!) Feel free to contact me with questions.
Another Dunkerque update. Being an IT contractor who works from home 2 days a week, I have a lot of time to smash my head against this thing. If that helps explain the crazy progress over the last 7 days. After running some numbers, I've decided to go with the brushless setup on the Dunkerque. For those interested, I am running two Turnigy 850KV outrunners (they don't even sell these anymore!) and two Hobbyking 45A car ESC's with reverse. At 11.1v, which is the LiPO battery packs I've decided on as my household standard, those motors should deliver almost 9000 shaft RPM...which is crazy! Good thing we are going to send that power to the props through some gear reduction, right now I have 28t gears on the shafts and 14t gears on the motors for 2:1 reduction. We will see how fast the boat is, if she is too fast I will bump up to 2.5:1 or 3:1. Pump for now is standard BC brushed setup with a simple Hobbyking brushed ESC set to 100% all the time. Right now I'm working on motor mounts, which are being made out of 3/16" angle aluminum. Yesterday during our little snowed-in build session here in NJ I managed to get the 01 level of the superstructure built and mounted to the deck. I need to figure out what I'm doing with the deck tie downs...my original plan of swivel window screen clips was shot down by very thin caprail. The screw hole would leave no material left! Oh well, minor design oversight. I tried magnets on the North Carolina with little luck, maybe I'll give that another whirl? Who knows! Anyway, beauty shot:
I am watching this build with interest as I have a Dunkerque hull and plans and that is it . Is your Super structure 3D printed ? Great work so far !!
Yes Curt, my superstructure and turrets are 3d printed courtesy of the wonderful @rcengr and the files he uploaded to this site.
